


The Kids Are Alright

by stuckinmybook



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:06:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23829565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuckinmybook/pseuds/stuckinmybook
Summary: As Vanya stormed through the house, wrecking everything in sight, he felt like he was looking into his own darkest thoughts. He followed Vanya as their other siblings ran to the side. All of the hate and abandonment that his siblings put him through… he saw it in Vanya’s powerful white eyes. The storm that she raged woke something up in him. He felt angry, too.~Klaus decides to do something during Vanya's breakdown in the Academy.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 2
Kudos: 338





	The Kids Are Alright

**Author's Note:**

> I started playing around with a different way that the scene with Pogo in episode ten could have gone. This funky little thing came from it. Your feedback is greatly appreciated! I am still new to posting.

For Klaus, living with his siblings again was nothing like the first time. Well, maybe the two times had  _ some  _ similarities- like during family meetings when Diego and Luther would go at it like they were thirteen again - but overall the two felt so different. This time, they actually  _ talked. _

It started the night when Vanya had her breakdown in her all-too-familar prison cell. When the house started shaking, Klaus decided that enough was enough. As Vanya stormed through the house, wrecking everything in sight, he felt like he was looking into his own darkest thoughts. He followed Vanya as their other siblings ran to the side. All of the hate and abandonment that his siblings put him through… he saw it in Vanya’s powerful white eyes. The storm that she raged woke something up in him. He felt angry, too.  _ Angry and spiteful and just as abused.  _ All of them deserved to feel that way, with how they were treated and treated each other. It wasn’t fair of Vanya to take it out on them this way. 

“Enough, Vanya!” He had shouted, standing behind her just as she reached Pogo. His voice came out strange, a little inhuman. He hadn’t noticed at the time. He did notice the cool, vibrating energy that sprouted in the pit of his stomach and came out of his hands. She focused on him, eyes glaring. She put her hand out, thrusting forward. He felt a wave of energy rushed toward him. As Ben shouted beside him, instinct took over. He threw his hands up and stopped the energy. With a yell, he pushed the energy toward one of daddy’s precious taxidermy pieces. It broke in half, falling to the floor. 

“Vanya,” He growled, walking toward her. As he continued to speak, they pushed each other invisibly. Their own walls of energy fought each other as they pushed closer and closer together. “Think about this. We’ve all been abused. All of us. Dad hurt you and me and every one of our siblings. Ben  _ died  _ because of Dad. We might not have all been put through exactly what you had, but we are all just as angry and miserable as you are. It  _ sucks  _ being a Hargeeve, Vanya. It really does. But this isn’t going to fix anything.” 

They finally met in the middle. Vanya’s eyes were still glowing, but the rest of her faces had softened some. Without the white, they would be her normal wide doe eyes. Klaus broke through her now-weak force field and wrapped his arms around her. “I love you, Vanya, but this isn’t the way to make things better. We have to work on this together, okay? Don’t break us more than we already are.” 

Vanya relaxed, wrapping her arms around him. The groaning and rumbling finally came to an end. They clung to each other, a lifetime of anger and resentment coming to surface. Nothing else seemed to exist in that moment. Klaus felt tears on Vanya and suddenly realized he was in the same situation. He just felt so much and imagined that Vanya felt the same way. 

“Klaus?” Ben finally broke through their little bubble. He looked around and realized that they were both hovering above the floor. His stomach dropped as he looked down. Vanya, after Klaus pulled away, looked around as well. 

“What-?” Their eyes met- hers looking normal, thank the little girl in the sky- and they seemed to just understand what to do. They gently floated back down to the floor. Not so gently, they collapsed together almost immediately afterwards. 

Later, Klaus peeled his eyes open slowly. His body felt heavy, as if he had just woken up from a days-long nap. Maybe he had. As his eyes focused, he realized that he didn’t remember falling asleep. He groaned, pulling himself into a seating position slowly. 

“Klaus?” Diego sat to his left, looking concerned. Klaus rubbed his eye, looking around and trying to place what he had been doing before his little venture into unconsciousness. Diego put a hand out, settling on his shoulder as Klaus suddenly realized he was swaying. 

“Guten morgen,” Klaus chirped, voice rough. “Quick question- what just happened?”

“”Well,” Diego said. “We were hoping you could explain everything. That stunt with Vanya was something else.” 

“Stunt with Vanya?” Klaus squinted, fighting against the fatigue that clung to his bones. “What-” 

Suddenly, he remembered. Vanya trying to wreck the house. The new power that showed up.  _ He had floated. _ Where did all of that come from? How was he in his room right now? 

“Oh,” He said. Diego leaned back, looking at him with scrutinizing eyes. 

“Yeah,  _ oh.  _ You go all glow-y, like Van. You two looked like twins. Your eyes were glowing blue, though. A little different from her white, I guess. And the floating? T-t-telekinesis? What the h-h-hell, Klaus?” Diego got more and more heated as he went on. 

Klaus flung his legs over the side of his bed. He stood up, taking a moment to fight off a wave of dizziness. Ben watched him, uncharacteristically quiet. He looked oddly awestruck. “Vanya awake yet?” 

Diego shrugged. “I don’t know. Listen, you have some explaining to do.” 

“I do.” Klaus nodded. “We all do. That’s why we’re going to have a family meeting. Now.”

Klaus led the way out the door. Diego trailed behind him, looking lost. Klaus walked quickly to Vanya’s room, noticing that everything looked relatively untouched. Had that been  _ them _ ? He tried not to think about it too hard. Luther stood outside of Vanya’s room, looking like he was standing guard. Klaus brushed past Luther, ignoring his intense stare, and stopped in the doorway of Vanya’s room.

“Van?” He called out. She sat on his bed, looking even more frazzled than he felt. Allison was beside her, scribbling something on a pad of paper. Five stood on Allison’s other side, watching her scribbles. They all looked up at his voice. “Family meeting. Now.” 

They all nodded. Five helped Vanya to her feet while Allison migrated to Luther. They all followed behind Klaus as he led everyone to their usual family meeting spot. They were surprisingly quiet as they settled in. Klaus stood in Luther’s I’m-the-leader spot. He snagged Vanya’s arm and planted her beside him. 

“You okay?” He asked, too quiet for the rest to hear. She shrugged, looking down for a moment. 

“Do you-” She cut off, a look of contemplation crossing her face. She finally nodded, looking him in the eye intensely. “Thank you. I don’t-I don’t feel alone anymore.” 

They shared a moment again of silence, acknowledging the other’s feeling of oops-I-used-too-much-of-my-new-weird-holy-shit-I-have-real-life-powers. It felt strange to Klaus to suddenly be understood so well. He felt so confident from it. He hoped they would all feel the same way soon. That was, of course, the main point of the family meeting. 

“What’s going on? What was all of that-” Luther faltered as everyone turned to look at him. “Why were you hiding powers?” 

“I wasn’t,” Klaus said simply. He slung an arm around Vanya before continuing. “Just like little Vanya here, I didn’t know. I think… I think Dad let me drug myself, just like Vanya did with his happy little pills. I…” 

Klaus shook his head. “Wait. Let me start over. When Vanya was going on her little ramage, I looked at her and saw myself. Drugged from a young age, locked away as punishment, shunned away from the rest of you. We were the same. I realized… Dad wanted us to hate each other. He made Diego and Luther hate each other. Allison was made into the princess of the family. All of you couldn’t stand me. Even Ben… we all loved him. He couldn’t stick around, could he?”

“Hey!” Diego looked angry. Ben, meanwhile, nodded in agreement to Klaus. Klaus was the only one who knew the whole story with Ben’s death. How their daddy dearest had goaded him into going too far with the Horror. “Don’t talk about Ben like that.” 

Klaus waved his hand and Ben flickered into the land of existence. As soon as he realized, he began speaking. “Klaus is right.”

His siblings jumped at his voice. They turned to look at their long-dead sibling. He waved at their stares. 

“As I was saying,” Klaus continued. “I felt so angry that we had all treated each other so badly because of him. Van isn’t the only one that has lashed out, even if hers has been the most… explosive. She’s not even the only one that has hurt one of our own.” 

“What are you saying, Klaus?” Five asked. His young eyes glinted at Klaus’s accusation. 

“Luther.” Klaus pointed. “Allison.” He pointed again. “Five. Diego.” 

They all looked indignant. Klaus waved his hands, accidentally sending out a wave of energy. They reared back with its force, but thankfully it wasn’t too strong. Klaus laughed. 

“Me too. We’re all on the shit list. Diego, you cut Luther even after breaking Ben’s statue. Luther, you choked me against a wall and then got high at the club while I-” Klaus hesitated. Ben took over. 

“Klaus died right beside you, buddy.” Klaus nodded while Luther blanched, paling. 

“And Ally… We all know what happened with Claire. My point is,” He paused,  _ for the drama _ . “We’re all kinda shit because of dear old dad. We all have that same rage that made Vanya break last night. But we don’t have to be. We can start over, be nicer to each other. Learn how to actually be decent human beings. Because if we don’t…” 

“One of us will be responsible for the apocalypse.” Five finished, jumping to his feet. “That’s it. We all cause it.  _ We caused the apocalypse. _ ”

“Got it in one, old man!” Klaus cheered. Five flipped him off, but the venom behind it was gone. All seven of them stared at each other, processing the information. After a few moments, Diego spoke up. 

“When did you get so smart, little bro?” Klaus shook his head, smiling. 

“Drugs, man. They must really rot your brains. I’ve been taking them since before the mausoleum. It’s been since I was like twelve. Haven’t really been able to use my brain since then.” Five stepped forward, looking at him carefully. 

Five fired off an equation, eyebrow arched. Klaus blinked a few times before spitting out an answer. Five’s impressed look was answer enough. 

“I’m a fucking genius!” Klaus laughed. “Teach me your ways, Five-y!” 

Five laughed incredulously back “We’ll see.” 

It was quiet again for a few moments as they settled into Klaus’s new revelation. Klaus felt like a different person as he looked around, his head clear sans a bit of dizziness for the first time since he was a child. Even the ghosts seemed to respect his new found hold on his powers. They edge on the very end of his vision, unusually silent. He liked it. 

Allison held up her notebook, sharpie written over the page It read, “ _ You still need to explain how you fixed everything. _ ” 

Klaus shrugged. “I’m still not really sure what happened. Van?” 

“I don’t really know either.” 

And so Ben started explaining how Klaus had started glowing right after he began talking to Vanya. It started with his hands (which Klaus remembered happened), but seemed to spread to his whole body not long after. Even his eyes had gone blue and his voice had taken on a weird echo. As he had pushed at Vanya, her wreckage had slowed. Once they had joined for their hug, everything began righting itself again. They had slowly floated up as Vanya’s destruction reversed, as if the collapsed infrastructure of the building was a pile of putty that could simply smooth back together without a sign of previous damage. All of the dust and little bits and pieces seemed to magically know where to go, sealing back together perfectly. It was a little unbelievable to watch, according to Ben. It was weird, even for an Academy kid. 

“It really is like it didn’t happen,” Klaus said, looking around. “Which means…” 

“The cell,” Vanya whispered. “It-I-” 

“We’ll get rid of it together,” Klaus told her. “We’ll get rid of your cell and Diego’s tank and the mausoleum and everything else, alright?” 

“You keep talking about the mausoleum,” Luther spoke up. “And a tank?” 

“Yep,” Klaus popped the “p.” “Dad used to throw me in one for days at a time. Lost a whole week, once. That’s what started all the drinkin’ and drugs. And Diego-”

“He used to put me in this big tank and test how long I could hold my breath. Once it turned to hours… He started to test other stuff with it.” Diego scrubbed a hand over his face. “I was in it for a full day once. Couldn’t even use the restroom. Put me under another time.” 

Klaus barked out a bitter laugh. “Surprised we’re all so fucked up, Luther?” 

And so the family meeting continued. They all hashed out their most prevalent, worst hurts and past injuries. They took turns complaining, being comforted, and, yes, arguing some over their problems they had with each other in the past. Of course, they didn’t even touch on everything that each of the seven siblings held against one another. But, by the end of the meeting, they all understood one another better. They felt more like siblings than ever. 

Everyone moved back into the mansion, even Allison. She moved her weekly therapy visits there, knowing she still had a long way to go before she could be with Claire again. They had family meetings twice a week and had at least three meals together a week. Grace loved making Sunday brunch especially, so Sundays turned into family days. They had a weekly fun night every Sunday, playing games and watching movies. They still argued sometimes and occasionally started to slip back into old habits, but they changed pretty drastically. 

Klaus suddenly found himself helping Five with his equations and held debates with him regularly. He spent a lot of time with Vanya, honing in on their new powers. He went out with Diego, patrolling the city for people who needed help (but not for criminals for Diego to stab). He found it harder to spend time with Allison and Luther, at first, but soon found himself going on shopping trips and helping with the Academy’s new greenhouse. They all spent time with each other, exploring new sides of themselves that they had never dared to even think about. 

The Hargreeves had finally found their peace from their founder. 


End file.
